Snohomish family hits pay dirt with auto promotion

Herald staff

SNOHOMISH – Steve Pope and his family are driving a new Jeep today after winning a Gold Rush Days promotion last week sponsored by Les Schwab Tires.

Pope, of Snohomish, picked up his Jeep Thursday at the Snohomish store after his entry was drawn from an estimated 250,000 that were submitted in the Puget Sound area.

TELEVISION

n Bothell firm featured: Officials at Sonosite of Bothell, which makes hand-held ultrasound equipment, say their portable scanners will be featured on The Discovery Heath Channel at 6 p.m. July 23 during a program titled, the "Cyber-Medicine Discovery Special." It will focus on how the device is used to help confirm diagnoses and plan surgeries.

n Bigger "Business Center": CNBC is expanding its one-hour flagship evening business show, "Business Center," by 30 minutes in a bid to widen the lead over its competitor, CNN’s "Moneyline." The longer version will kick off July 31, running from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The business news channel also said it was opening a Silicon Valley bureau and redesigning its stock ticker to provide later stock quotes and make the figures easier to read.

metals

n Monday’s prices: Gold sold for $284.10 a troy ounce, silver sold for $5.03 and platinum sold for $570.70.

INVESTING

n T-bill rates mixed: Interest rates on short-term Treasury securities were mixed in Monday’s auction. The Treasury Department sold $8.5 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 5.900 percent, up from 5.830 percent last week. An additional $7.5 billion was sold in six-month bills at a rate of 5.945 percent, down from 5.975 percent. The new discount rates understate the actual return to investors: 6.071 percent for three-month bills with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,850.90 and 6.215 percent for six-month bills with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,699.40. In a separate report, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, the most popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, fell to 6.08 percent last week from 6.13 percent the previous week.

ECONOMY

May borrowing up: Americans borrowed money freely in May, ringing up the biggest rise in consumer credit since the beginning of the year, the Federal Reserve said Monday. Total consumer credit rose a seasonally adjusted $11.8 billion in May for an annual growth rate of 9.8 percent. That was the largest gain since January, when Americans increased their borrowing by $15.7 billion. May’s bigger-than-expected increase surprised many analysts. They were expecting borrowing to grow by $8 billion.